The Green Bike Tour of Renewable Energy is a solar-powered, periodic bicycle tour. The goal of the Tour is to promote home-grown, renewable energy to strengthen rural economies and secure America’s future.

Thursday, June 10, 2010

The Green Bike Tour has linked policy makers, solar energy production sites, environmental groups and research institutions in Slovenia all this week. Today, we traveled up over the edge of the Alps. We passed several solar sites since solar is the perfect distributed electricity generation alternative where it is difficult to get power lines installed and storms tend to disrupt service.

On Friday morning, we have a chance to tell you about it directly with a webinar that we welcome you to join.

We mainly spent our Thursday riding to the end of one river valley and up and over the mountains to the next. The main planning work of the day was for Friday's webinar, to solidify arrangements with University of Iowa Professor Tom Cook, who has been on most of the most recent Green Bike tours.

Tom has set up a link for a university-to-university hookup, which we will make Friday at 10 a.m. Iowa time. Professor Mladen Franko of the University of Nova Gorica (UNG) will make some remarks about the value of international education and Iowans Joe Bolkcom, John Moreland, Ed Woolsey and David Osterberg will report on the weeklong tour of renewable energy in Slovenia.

The university sponsors at the Center for Global and Regional Environmental Research and the Environmental Health Sciences Research Center will be linked to UNG as will our other sponsor, the Iowa Policy Project. We welcome everyone. It is very easy to engage in distance education and the commencement of our tour via the Elluminate link below.

Simply copy the link in your browser, put in your name and initials and you can participate. You can just listen or listen and ask questions. The technology is very user friendly. The Green Bike team hopes to see many Iowans on our reporting session Friday at 10 a.m. Iowa time.

Here you can read our entries on the Tour's progress. Please share your comments or ask questions of Green Bike Riders by clicking on "comments" below a post. Or, if you have other questions, email greenbiketour@gmail.com.